Friday, 22 January 2010

This morning....I came across this little minor story...that I doubt anybody from CNN or ABC or Fox ever mentioned. The US Army has prepared about a hundred tents...big enough for ten folks each...at Gitmo, for Haitians found on the open seas trying to make it to the US because of the earthquake.

Apparently, there is this plan out there....to ensure some transit facility, for escapees of Haiti.

I started laughing...the sheer mention of Gitmo and Haitians....would get a huge number of international America-haters up in arms. How could America dare shove a thousand Haitians up into Gitmo? Well...then you consider...what the heck do you do...when you come up on a boat out of gas and forty miles from the US coastline and eighty Haitians on board?

But here's the interesting thing. You take a Haitian dude....in a poor country...hungry and starving...and he's been out on some damn boat for three days with almost no water....and then you put the guy in a clean atmosphere....three meals a day....clean water....clothing handed to you....and you start to have an appreciation of Gitmo and what it offers. You offer up cable TV, Maxwell House coffee, donuts for breakfast, and a bar of cheap Dove soap....and suddenly you got a guy all weepy-eyed.

You might even consider Gitmo a four-star hotel and resort....but just don't mention that to the America-haters.

Yesterday came the news of this bank overhaul deal. You could sit there and watch stocks slide....news analysts running around to explain what the President really said....and a bunch of bank executives huddled up in the corner.

Let's examine reality. The banks in America pay a fair amount of money to all one hundred senators. It's their hush-money, their bribe-money, their campaign-money....you pick whichever. They will meet up in the next month with their hired hand, and lay out what will be acceptable and what will not.

Then Senator Snuffy will walk up and establish this concept of a reasonable overhaul of the banking sector. There will be three or four reasonable changes that have a minor effect on the banking sector.

The President will stand there...with this massive overhaul plan and find himself winking at everyone...hoping that he can just suggest something, and it'll happen. It won't.

So spring will come and go, and this 4-star moment will be worked up in the house and senate....with this passage of their bill...not the Presidents. The bank executives will come on TV and swear up to God almighty that this was a long time in coming and will clear up all their terrible woes.

And by summer....the banks can go back to whatever sneaky patterns they had and get on with real business of screwing over people with excess money in their pockets. For you guys who do your own investing...use bank CD's...and drive a pick-up....then your life pretty much stays the same.

From my vast life....I've probably heard about 400 minutes of Air America. To be honest, it was a five-minute period here....a twelve-minute period there....and a six-minute period in between.

I came to laugh over most of what Air America put out. Out of every ten discussions....one probably found some decent theme that I could listen to and find as a good debate.

Who listened to Air America? Well...that was a problem. They never had a real station in Texas, Bama, or Kentucky. You could get them via the internet....but then it wasn't that easy to travel and get them around the clock.

So after all these years....they ceased to operate this week. I think they knew it was dying last year....and simply tried to carry it on through to 2010.

The question would be....why can't a liberal agenda network work like Rush? It would be interesting to have a Rush-like liberal in existence today....to offer some views to balance out the spectrum....but frankly, it's not happening. It hasn't happened in twenty years. The "Ed the Red" effort? Well...he's done ok but he's the three-quarter Rush...so you simply wait for something better.

Air America died a miserable death of sorts....it never got to the real public....it never had four-star capability....and it lacked growth of any type.

So somewhere out there....there are probably around 18,000 folks who woke up this week...to find the network gone....and scratching their head now. What to listen to now? Well...maybe the Doctor Laurie show....or some local flea market operation.

So let's all open a Bud...salute the tree out in the yard, and think of kind thoughts for a minute...as the Air America ship sinks.

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.